SDFF Alum’s New Project Selected for Sundance/Sandbox Fund & SFFilm Rainin Filmmakers With Disabilities grants
Julie Wyman’s Untitled Dwarfism Project was recently selected for two prestigious non-fiction media grants. The project is one of eight films awarded the Sundance Institute l Sandbox Fund Grant, which funds and supports films that examine convergences of science and art, and one of two films to receive the new SFFILM Rainin Filmmakers With Disabilities Grant, which is given to films addressing stories from within the disability community that focus on social justice.
The concerns of both grants converge in Wyman’s project, which focuses on an emerging gene therapy that promises to make children with achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism, taller. In effect, the drug threatens to erase the very community it aims to serve. Told from the perspective of filmmaker Julie Wyman who was diagnosed in adulthood with hypochondroplasia dwarfism, and featuring a range of voices from within the LP community, the film explores serious questions about identity, community and self-determination posed by both medical diagnoses and technologies.
The SFFILM Rainin Filmmakers With Disabilities Grant is a new initiative supporting applicants whose films specifically address stories from the disability community. This new set of grants are being given in addition to the SFFILM Rainin Grants that support narrative films still in development, which address social justice issues (distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges) in a positive and meaningful way, and benefit the Bay Area filmmaking community.
Sundance Institute l Sandbox Fund Grant gives financial and year-round institutional support to independent, non-fiction projects seeking to explore the intrinsic link between science and culture through innovative storytelling. It is a collaboration between the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Fund, which is dedicated to the discovery and development of independent documentary filmmakers, and documentary studio Sandbox Films, the mission of which is to illuminate the art and beauty of scientific inquiry.
Wyman is a two-time SDFF alum, STRONG! and Fat Mob played in 2013 and 2016, respectively.